Smartass Blog

Our Insights, Tips, Tricks and Opinions.

Calling all Unicorns…. Yes, we are a mythical breed. How can one design an icon set and then go write functional programming for an application. We are seen as gold to most start-ups. Executioners, survivalists, masters of wizardry. For those that don’t know what an Unicorn is in the modern world of hiring or job […]

Node.js hit the scene a few years back and has taken off like crazy. Particularly among front-end developers. It gave them a chance to get their hands dirty on the backend without looking like fools. If you’re new to this game, don’t worry, intimidating at first, but you will get it. Along with Node.js, NPM […]

Essentially there is always a few steps to follow in order to easy SSH in to your AWS server without the need for your .pem key. For security reasons, this is not an option when you first setup a server, but with these few instructions, right when you setup your server can save you a […]

Every software company I have been to seems to have one consistent problem amongst them. “The Website” the main kitten-kaboodle. The main spot for a company to say whatever they may want, and in less than one second convince someone to stay on the page and read more or click away. In other words, the make […]

Episode 1 introduces Dave and myself. We go through some of our history in website development and design. Then we dive into some interesting tools that can be used in development workflows such as RAMP for WordPress and WP Migrate Pro. We touch upon some of the challenges that we both have when working from […]

Run this command once you are logged in through terminal. sudo chown -R www-data:www-data (your wordpress folder) This is for a Linux ubuntu host running Apache. This will fix the FTP request that wordpress gives you if you try to install a plugin or update through the admin portal. Many people who use WordPress have […]

1. Codecademy – http://www.codecademy.com/ Strengths: No Signup Great step-by-step instructions in their lessons. Learn by Doing Q&A forum for questions on each lesson Weaknesses: No Videos Few practical uses and challenges Few backend lessons 2. SitePoint – http://www.sitepoint.com/ SitePoint is a great resource for learning random lessons. I tend to land on their website if searching certain […]

Start typing “Permalinks” into Google and you will quickly start seeing links that are relative to WordPress. The most popular links for permalink help are noted here: Wordpress – Using Permalinks WordPress – File Permissions What these wordpress pages don’t say An exact checklist for checking why your permalinks might not be working. Pre-requisites: Check Setup […]

A CEO is like the president, they give the executive orders. The problem lies with just that. They give the word “action“. But if you ever noticed the president has an entourage, like any CEO should have. This entourage typically consists of people with different backgrounds and expertise that present the plan for the action. CEOs […]